MOM

I was watching a trailer for the movie The Back-up Plan when I got to thinking. I always had a vague back-up plan in high school: If by the time I was 30 I wasn't married, I decided, I'd have a baby with a gay friend. I think a lot of us girls have had that plan, but how many have actually carried it through? I decided to ask a few friends. Maybe life doesn't work out exactly the way we want, and yet we still want children, a career, a partner or something else that hasn't quite come on the scene yet. So what are you gonna do? Sit around and lament over what you don't have? No! Life is short. You set a time frame and you say, "If this doesn't happen by this date, then I'm gonna do this, take action, make it happen for myself." I talked to some ladies who know what they want—and have back-up plans to make those dreams happen.

Baby Bytes: 15 must-click mom links.

My mom didn’t just help prepare me for school; she prepared me for life — and in a big way. After the jump, the ten best things my mom, the teacher, taught me.

A roundup of Mother's day-centric parenting-related links from around the web.

Mom probably knows a thing or two about love, too—he's teasing you, because he has a crush on you; you're not in love, you're fourteen! Flowers are a way to a gal's heart. Here, 8 mommy bloggers lend some advice.

If you're a mom, Mother's Day is your big day—the day when no one can complain when you ask them to do something, when people are supposed to show appreciation for you, when you're (theoretically) not allowed to cook or do housework or any of those other things that always seem to fall to mom. Looking for a little something extra this Mother's Day? Here are some creative ideas on what to ask for. Because, honestly? You deserve it.

Have you ever known a married couple that just didn't seem as though they should fit together—yet they are both happy in the marriage, and you can't figure out why?

When her husband would walk through the door after a full day of work, she would hand over the kids, go upstairs and transform herself from mother into wife. This, she felt, was the reason she and her husband had an incredibly erotic sex life.

Being a parent is a central part of many women's lives, and YourTango has covered it from all perspectives: deciding when to have kids, sex after kids, trying to "have it all," and more. Below, a selection of our best posts on motherhood (and fatherhood—afterall, you can't make a baby without a father).

She's cleaned up scraped knees, wiped away tears, soothed sick tummies, offered sage advice and a little bit of coddling. She teaches right from wrong, and put up with you when no one else would. She's a (constructive?) critic and your biggest fan. She's your mom—or your wife—and there's no way you can repay her for giving birth to you—or your kids. These gifts will at least show her how much you appreciate her, whatever type of lady she is.

Question: It’s been a year since I’ve had my baby and I never feel like having sex. Am I normal? Answer: Very normal. Quite frankly, why would you feel like having sex?

A columnist for The Frisky takes a break from her regularly scheduled "Sex with Susannah" programming to bring you breaking news from the "everything your mother never told you about sex" front. During the course of writing her column, receiving reader letters and writing about sex and relationships, it's come to her attention that there are some basic sex facts it would behoove everyone to know... especially the ladies.

Who doesn't want to be that special girl who can turn a big, dumb, sexy, tattoo-covered biker into a domesticated Prince Charming? We all want to be that girl, but Sandra Bullock WAS that magical girl. Not only did WE all love her, but the biggest, baddest dude in the cable biker world fell at her adorably quirky feet, while she played loving stepmother to his adorable half-stripper children. It was the fractured fairy-tale version of the American Dream. We all wanted it to work.

Move over, Brad Pitt. Make some room, Johnny Depp. Thanks to Jeremy Renner's star turn in The Hurt Locker, the single actor has become the Hollywood hunk du jour. Everyone wants to know who he's dating, if he's dating, and—most importantly—who he's taking to the Oscars this Sunday. But despite rumored romances with Charlize Theron and Jessica simpson, Jeremy will be taking his mom to the big event.

If, like us, you're always looking for somebody else to blame for your loneliness and breadstick addiction, it's a good news day for you. Two new studies show that not only are parents responsible for how you look, they may have a hand in whether or not you ever find true love.

That's because, during his acceptance speech, the "proud" dad announced to the world at large that his daughters, Ayla Brown, 21, a former "American Idol" finalist, and Arianna Brown, 19, were "available."Of course Brown could do a lot more damage if allowed to go on at length—say, in a filibuster on the Senate floor—but the issue raises an even thornier question: Should your parents be allowed to intervene in your love life at all?